Aboard the USS Sunfish SS-281, July 3-4, 1944…

Not every Fourth of July comes with flags and fireworks. Sometimes, it comes with fog, fishing boats, and a barometer that just can’t make up its mind.

On July 3, 1944, the submarine USS Sunfish slipped into her patrol zone. She was sixty miles southeast of Kurabu Zaki, off the northern edge of Paramushiru, one of the outermost of Japan’s Kurile Islands. This was not a place for parades or patriotic speeches. It was a place for shadows, silence, and submarine warfare. On this particular patrol, action was measured less in torpedoes and more in fathoms and fogbanks.

Continue reading “Independence Day in the Kuriles” →